Tag: Scientific Method

Enlarge/ Rendering of a Falcon Heavy on the launch pad. (credit: SpaceX)

Thursday night, SpaceX founder Elon Musk tweeted that the Falcon Heavy rocket would make its maiden launch in November from Launch Complex-39A in Florida. Although this event has been long promised by the company, with real hardware being tested and moved across the country, this date finally feels real.

Musk has recently attempted to set expectations for the maiden launch, which will carry a dummy payload because the rocket is so experimental. “I encourage people to come down to the Cape to see the first Falcon Heavy mission,” Musk said earlier this month during a talk at the International Space Station Research & Development Conference. “It’s guaranteed to be exciting.”

The Falcon Heavy is powered by a modified Falcon 9 rocket as its center core, with two Falcon 9 first stages as side boosters. To work,

In 1915, Albert Einstein, with a ee pittle help from his friends, developed a theory of gravity that overturned what we’d thought were the very foundations of physical reality. The idea that the space that we inhabit was not perfectly described by Euclidean geometry had been inconceivable—so much so that the philosopher Immanuel Kant, a radical thinker in so many ways, proclaimed that it was not possible for any theory of physics to dispense with it.

The physicist Werner Heisenberg later pointed out the implications of Kant’s mistake. The great philosopher had posited that our intuitions about the ancient geometry of Euclid meant that it was the necessary foundation for physical reality. The fact that this turned out to be false called the integrity of Kant’s entire philosophical edifice into question.

Despite their radical break with past ideas of space and time, Einstein’s theories would

Age may not be a state of mind, but the brain is definitely involved. That’s the conclusion of a study published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, which provides compelling evidence that a specific structure in the brain, called the hypothalamus, plays a significant role in controlling the entire body’s aging. The results suggest stem cells play a critical role, but only in part via their ability to generate new neurons.

The results come from researchers at the Bronx’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine. They, along with several other labs, have generated evidence that suggested the hypothalamus played a key role in aging. That makes a certain amount of sense: aging is a systemic process, and the hypothalamus contains structures like the pituitary that release hormones that influence the entire body. And there’s already been some indications that factors that control the dynamics of

After two serious accidents in 2015 and 2016, SpaceX has been on a tear in 2017 with 10 successful launches, including the historic re-flight of two used boosters and a used Dragon spacecraft. These achievements suggest the company is well on its way toward developing low-cost, reusable boosters, and therefore the rocket company founded by Elon Musk may be on the cusp of capturing much of the global launch market.

A new valuation appears to back up this optimism. According to the New York Times, SpaceX recently raised $350 million in additional funding, and during this process the company was valued at $21 billion. This represents a significant increase from 2015, when Google and Fidelity invested $1 billion in SpaceX, valuing the company at $12 billion.

In recent years, there has been a lot of interest in coupling sound and light together. Admittedly, we’ve been doing this for a long time, but we’ve always been limited in terms of what we can do with how nature puts materials together. Now, with our ability to construct structures that are the right size, we can make devices that really dance to the tune that we give them.

This control has been demonstrated in a very cute way recently. Researchers have put together micro pillars that convert light into long-lasting, very high-frequency sound waves.

Nature leads the way

Nature, of course, allows sound and light to play together in different ways. For instance, if a gas absorbs light, it will heat up and expand, so flashing a light into a gas will generate a sound

The Canaanites are famous as the bad guys of the Book of Joshua in the Tanakh, or the Hebrew Bible. First, God orders the Hebrews to destroy the Canaanites along with several other groups, and later we hear that the Canaanites have actually been wiped out. Among archaeologists, however, the Canaanites are a cultural group whose rise and fall has remained a mystery. Now, a group of archaeologists and geneticists have discovered strong evidence that the Canaanites were not wiped out. They are, in fact, the ancestors of modern Lebanese people.

The Canaanites were a people who lived three to four thousand years ago off the coast of the Mediterranean, and their cities were spread across an area known today as Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Syria. Though they were one of the first civilizations in the area to use writing, they wrote most of their documents

A doctor who appeared to vouch for and defend Gwyneth Paltrow’s high-profile lifestyle and e-commerce site, Goop, now says that she does not see herself as a Goop doctor and would not endorse the site, according to an interview with Stat.

Two weeks ago, Dr. Aviva Romm provided a signed letter included in a Goop post titled “Uncensored: A Word from Our Doctors.” The post, written in part by the Goop team, including Romm and another doctor (Steven Gundry), collectively defended Goop’s questionable health products and penchant for unproven and often nonsensical medical theories. Those theories include Moon-powered vaginal eggs and energy-healing space-suit stickers.

“This morning John Urschel informed me of his decision to retire from football,” Ravens’ coach John Harbaugh said in a statement. “We respect John and respect his decision. We appreciate his efforts over the past three years and wish him all the best in his future endeavors.”

Urschel played with the Ravens for three seasons and was competing for the starting center job. Thus far, he has not publicly discussed his reasoning for the early and

A team of researchers in Oregon have become the first in the US to attempt genetically altering human embryos, according to reporting by MIT Technology Review. The attempt is said to represent an advance in the safety and efficacy of methods used to correct genetic defects that spur disease.

Until now, the only three published reports of human embryo gene editing were from researchers in China. But their experiments—using a gene-editing method called CRISPR—caused “off-target” genetic changes, basically slopping edits in the DNA that were not intended. Also, not all the cells in the embryos were successfully edited, causing an effect called “mosaicism.” Together, the problems suggested that the technique was not advanced enough to safely alter human embryos without unintended or incomplete genetic consequences.

Scientists familiar with the new US work told MIT Technology Review that the Oregon team

Men’s spunk may be getting noticeably less spunky in some high-income countries, according to a meta-analysis of international swimmers.

Skimming and re-examining sperm data from 185 past independent studies, researchers estimated that sperm counts of men from select high-income regions—North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe—dropped about 52 percent between 1973 to 2011, from 99 million sperm per milliliter to about 47 million per milliliter. Likewise, estimates of total sperm count per batch dropped 59 percent, from 337.5 million in 1973 to 137.5 million in 2011.

The researchers, led by Hagai Levine of Hebrew University, also looked at data from what they referred to as “other” countries, including some in South America, Asia and Africa. They saw no trends in these places, but they also had relatively little data from them.

Enlarge/ On the road, near the summit. There are presently 10 optical telescopes on top of Mauna Kea. (credit: Eric Berger)

The Big Island of Hawaii has perhaps the best astronomical seeing conditions in the northern hemisphere, and the University of California system and Caltech have a $1.4 billion plan to build the world’s largest telescope there. The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) would open up an unprecedented window into the early history of the universe—and other unknown wonders.

But some native Hawaiians do not want further telescopes built on the sacred summit of Mauna Kea, which at nearly 14,000 feet is the highest point in the chain of Pacific islands. They have put up fierce opposition to the telescope’s construction alongside other instruments already on the summit and have scored some wins. For example, after the state’s Board of Land and Natural Resources issued a building permit to

The United States has by far the most rich and diverse commercial aerospace industry in the world, but that doesn’t mean companies in other countries aren’t giving it a go as well. One of those companies is Interstellar Technologies, which began as a group of hobbyists in 1997 and became a corporation in 2003.

After more than a decade of engine and booster development, Interstellar is poised to make its first launch attempt—and the first launch of a private rocket from Japan—this weekend. As early as Saturday, the company will attempt to launch a sounding rocket named Momo from the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. The launch window opens from 10:20 to 12:30 local time.

Signs of a degenerative brain disease were widespread among a sample of donated brains of former football players, researchers reported Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The finding bolsters the connection between playing American football and developing Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which is linked to repeated blows to the head and was first described in boxers. However, the large study provides little new information about the disease, its progression, or prevalence.

The bank of 202 former football players’ brains is a “convenience sample,” meaning it’s a biased sampling not representative of football players overall. Instead, players and their families donated the brains after players experienced symptoms connected with CTE during life or the players were suspected or considered at risk of developing CTE. The

Scott Parazynski has chased extremes all of his life. Not in a reckless way, perhaps, but rather because his life’s goal seems to have been to experience just about as much crazy stuff that one human possibly could. As a result, it seems plausible that Parazynski has experienced more extreme environments than any human ever has—and he has written a new book that brings the reader along for the ride: The Sky Below.

But Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), the ranking Democrat on the committee, has released a letter or two herself, including one in which she sharply questioned whether Smith was appropriately overseeing scientific research. Now, Johnson and two other Democrats on the committee have turned their attention to Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency. The subject? Pruitt’s plan to have the EPA engage in a show debate over our understanding of climate science.

For the letter, Johnson was joined by Don Beyer (D-Va.) and Suzanne Bonamici (D-Ore.), fellow

Back in 2015, a group of business leaders and scientists published an “open letter” about how controlling artificial superintelligence might be the most urgent task of the twenty-first century. Signed by luminaries like Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, the letter has defined debates over AI in the years since. Bill Gates said in a Reddit AMA that he agrees with the letter. But, at last, there is a high-profile skeptic: Facebook giant Mark Zuckerberg, who has just come out strongly against the idea that AI is a threat to humanity.

At a backyard barbecue over the weekend, Zuckerberg fielded questions from Facebook Live. One asked about AI, and the social media mogul launched into a passionate rant:

I have pretty strong opinions on this. I am optimistic. I think you can build things

With firm vaccination campaigns, the US eliminated measles in 2000. The highly infectious virus was no longer constantly present in the country—no longer endemic. Since then, measles has only popped up when travelers carried it in, spurring mostly small outbreaks—ranging from a few dozen to a few hundred cases each year—that then fizzle out.

But all that may be about to change. With the rise of non-medical vaccine exemptions and delays, the country is backsliding toward endemic measles, Stanford and Baylor College of Medicine researchers warn this week. With extensive disease modeling, the researchers make clear just how close we are to seeing explosive, perhaps unshakeable, outbreaks.

According to results the researchers published in JAMA Pediatrics, a mere five-percent slip in measles-mumps-and-rubella (MMR) vaccination rates among kids aged two to 11 would triple measles cases

The advent of DNA testing has made it uncomfortably clear that our criminal justice system often gets things wrong. Things go wrong for a variety of reasons, but many of them touch on science, or rather the lack of a scientific foundation for a number of forensic techniques. But in 70 percent of the cases where DNA has overturned a conviction, it also contradicted the testimony of one or more eyewitnesses to the events at issue.

According to a new perspective published in PNAS, that shouldn’t surprise us. The paper’s author, Salk neuroscientist Thomas Albright, argues that we’ve learned a lot about how humans perceive the world, process information, and hold on to memories. And a lot of it indicates that we shouldn’t value eyewitness testimony as much as we do. Still, Albright offers some suggestions about how we can tailor the investigative process to compensate

Regardless the type of dietary supplements—from vitamins, energy drinks, herbal medicines, homeopathic products, to some hormonal treatments—they usually come with big claims about boosting health and wellbeing. While those claims are questionable (and often unfounded), the products collectively do enhance one thing: the volume of calls to poison control centers.

Between 2005 and 2012, the rate of supplement-related calls to poison centers increased 49.3 percent, researchers reported Monday in the Journal of Medical Toxicology. In the final year of data, the centers were getting calls at a rate of nearly 10 adverse exposures per 100,000 people.

There didn’t seem to be a big jump in use of dietary supplements during that time. Self-reported use among adults has held steady, around 49 to 54 percent, the authors note. But, these supplements are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration as

Unless you work at a coal, gas, or nuclear plant, you may not think about water when you think about electricity (certainly at a household level; they don’t mix). But water plays an important part in cooling many power plants, and many power plants also depend on a nearby water source to create steam that drives turbines. So the availability of water for power production is a serious consideration. Not enough water? That power plant could have to shut down. If the water isn’t chilly enough to cool the plant? Same problem.

In a paper published in Nature Energy this week, a group of researchers from the Netherlands estimated how water availability would affect coal, gas, and nuclear plants in the European Union out to 2030. The researchers took into account a changing climate that will likely make water

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